Christ, how long has it been?
Four years, man, and set up the tape machine - Bowie attempting to balance the microphone on top of a Carlsberg bottle - and no time to swap small talk because interview time is severely circumscribed, so by the time we've both sat down and Bowie's lit a Gauloise there's nothing to do but pull the pin and get straight on it.
Where can we start after four years? he asks.
Hell we can start anywhere; we both know where it will go... Why does "Heroes" - or more accurately "Heroes" come in quotes? Are the inverted commas actually part of the title.
Yeah. Firstly - it was quite a silly point really - I thought I'd pick on the only narrative song to use as the title. It was arbitrary, really, because there's no concept to the album.
I'd felt that the use of quotes indicate a dimension of irony about the word "Heroes" or about the whole concept of heroism.
Well, in that example they were, on that title track. The situation that sparked off the whole thing was - I thought - highly ironic. There's a wall by the studio - the album having been recorded at Hansa By The Wall in West Berlin - about there. It's about twenty or thirty meters away from the studio and the control room looks out onto it. There's a turret on top of the wall where the guards sit and during the course of lunch break every day, a boy and girl would meet out there and carry on.
They were obviously having an affair.
And I thought of all the places to meet in Berlin, why pick a bench underneath a guard turret on the wall? They'd come from different directions and always meet there... Oh, they were both from the west, but they had always meet right there. And I - using license - presumed that they were feeling somewhat guilty about this affair and so they had imposed this restriction on themselves, thereby giving themselves an excuse for their heroic act. I used this as a basis... therefore it is ironic.
Yes it is. You're perfectly right about that, but there was no reason why the album should have been called "Heroes" . It could have been called "the sons of silent ages". It was just a collection of stuff that I and Eno and Fripp had put together. Some of the stuff that was left off was very amusing, but this was the best of the batch, the stuff that knocked us out.
Do you find that recording in a studio that's right by the Berlin wall gives you a sense of being on the edge of something?
That's exactly right. I find that I have to put myself in those situations to produce any reasonable good writing. I've still got that same thing about when I get to a country or a situation and I have to put myself on a dangerous level, whether emotionally or mentally or physically, and it resolves in things like that: living in Berlin leading what is quite a spartan life for a person of my means, and in forcing myself to live according to the restrictions of that city.
So it's time to move now that other persons are writing songs about the Berlin wall.
Bowie chuckles into his special brew. Yes, I have noticed that, actually. I haven't yet made up my mind, but I have the choice of two places that I'm thinking of going to. One's Japan and the other is Israel, and I don't know which one's going to win.
The sight of the Thin White Duke in a Kibbutz strikes one as being too good a visual to pass up, plus Bowie went through a Japanese phase in '73.
Yes, and I keep wanting to go back there. I think I'll plump for Kyoto, because I want something very serene around me for a few months to see if that produces anything. It is also important to my private life that I go to Kyoto.
We talk about the Japanese mime/dance/theatre troupe Ondeko-Za, who'd just completed a run at Sadler's Wells and who Bowie had missed by a day in Amsterdam. It sounds like a token show for us lot to have a gander at. Bowie comments after I've described the show:
But in Japan - when I was travelling though it - there was an awful lot, particularly in the outlying villages and provinces, of very strange ritual performances that I hadn't seen before. And still, because my knowledge of Japanese is limited - to say the least! - I never really found out from what school it came from, or what its origins were. Since the purpose of all ritual must be invocation, what were the rituals designed to invoke.
Well, a lot of them where from Shintoism, and they talk very liberally about being one of the few countries in the world that tolerate all religions, but you'll only find about three Christians in the whole of Japan. They're tolerated, he laughs harshly, but everybody else is a Shintoist, mate! So most of their art forms derive from either that or the imperial sources. Its very sophisticated but a bit suspicious sometimes.
Yeah but so is Bowie himself. I think of the koto Bowie plays on Moss Garden from side two of "Heroes" and his berserk scream of "I'm under Japanese influence and my honour's at stake" from Blackout on the same album, and reflects that the Kibbutzim probably won't see DB for a while yet.
So what about China? After all, back in '71, Bowie was something of a Maoist.
Ahhh, that's still there. That place continues to intoxicate me. I got a glimpse of it when I was in Hong Kong... it's strange. There's no wall there, you see.
When you move out of Hong Kong into China you can just walk over and often you won't get shot at. It's quite feasible to sort of wander into China and just look around, wander around all those villages right near the border.
Hey, living dangerously is one thing, but recording an album in a situation where one of your musicians was actually liable to get shot.
(A sharp chuckle) I never travel with musicians. I only travel on my own these days. A far cry from the times he wouldn't budge an inch without bodyguard, secretary, personal assistant, travelling companion, hairdresser, P.R.
All my travelling is down...
https://www.beatles.ru/books/paper.asp?id=2672
